Sunday’s College Baseball Top-50 Scoreboard & Weekend Wrapup

The favorites ruled – in a big way – during Sunday’s slate of games involving teams in the CB360 top-50, with the higher-ranked squads winning nearly 90% (39-5) of the day’s top-50 games. The five upsets included only two that knocked off teams among the top-40, as Florida Gulf Coast completed its sweep at (15) Florida, 7-4 in 11 innings, while (42) Pepperdine won 2-1 at (28) Texas A&M in the series-deciding game.

To be fair, many of the weekend’s matchups were fairly one-sided and were played on the home fields of various top teams … so there was likely to be a low number of upsets. Sunday’s win allowed Pepperdine to join FGCU and Alabama as underdogs that won their weekend series vs. CB360 top-50 teams (the Tide won at #40 Florida Atlantic on Friday and Saturday, but lost game-3).

In addition to Pepperdine at Texas A&M, there were seven other head-to-head series between CB360 top-50 teams that wrapped up on Sunday. Most notably, (21) Cal State Fullerton completed its sweep at (22) TCU with a 7-0 win on Sunday, while (5) UCLA bounced back from a Saturday loss at (34) Baylor to win the series on Sunday (5-4).

Grahamm Wiest (Cal State Fullerton)

The five other head-to-head series ended as follows:
• (1) North Carolina won both ends of a doubleheader vs. visiting (45) Stony Brook (7-1, 9-8) for a series sweep
• (8) Oregon State also remained unbeaten, after finishing a 4-game sweep at (32) San Diego State, 7-1
• (25) UC Irvine – which swept Baylor on opening week – beat visiting (35) California, 9-1, to win that 4-game series (3-1)
• (19) Georgia Tech won its own series-deciding game, 10-1 vs. visiting (41) St. John’s
• (33) San Diego ended its 4-game home series vs. (37) Kent State with a 14-2 win (won series 3-1)

Notre Dame (cb360 #39) won for the third straight, 8-3, at Tulane, which was among the CB360 preseason top-50. It marked the first time since 1997 that a non-conference opponent has swept series at Tulane.

There also were 11 top-50 teams competing at various tournaments over the weekend:
• (10) Kentucky and (48) Coastal Carolina, in Myrtle Beach, SC (Coastal was host team and lost 8-2 to Kentucky on Sunday)
• host (12) Mississippi State, with (44) Purdue in the field
• host (43) Central Florida, with (46) Texas Tech in the field
• (18) Oklahoma at tournament in Corus Christi, TX
• other home tournaments for (4) LSU, (11) NC State, (23) Southern Miss. and (31) Virginia Tech

The eight 2012 College World Series teams have men with mixed results so far this season, at both ends of the spectrum (unbeaten and winless) and in between (34-23 combined; .597): Florida State 7-0 … Arkansas & Arizona 7-1 … South Carolina 5-1 … UCLA 4-2 … Kent State 1-7 … Stony Brook 0-6.

Andrew Morales (UC Irvine)

The updated CB360 top-50 is included below (full release coming later). Note that the formula has some tweaks going from the preseason to this update, as the rankings from Baseball America and Perfect Game are only a top-25 (preseason also included projected field of 64) while the coaches poll does not update after the first week of the season (thus the preseason poll still is used in the CNR) … thus there are some oddities towards the bottom of this top-50 but they will be fixed next week with a new coaches poll added to the mix.